The Cabinet and the Key

I’ve been thinking a lot about doors lately. Not the kind of doors that announce themselves with marble and banners, but the quiet ones. The ones you almost miss. A simple handle. A soft light underneath. A feeling that something inside is waiting, patiently, for you to decide you’re curious enough.

That’s the spirit that gave us the old cabinets of curiosities. Those Renaissance “wonder rooms” where collectors gathered strange shells, automata, painted relics, minerals, and oddities from far voyages weren’t museums yet. For me, they are better than a museum. They were personal maps of awe, arranged like private constellations. A way of saying: the world is bigger than this room can hold. And that purity and vision always enticed me.

When I started to imagine opening the doors of my Time for Magic studio, I didn’t picture you “arriving” so much as entering one of these wonder rooms, a place where I can share with you my visions and help you deep dive into a different world. Slower. Playful. Unique. The more I kept thinking about it, the more I realized: a cabinet of curiosities isn’t about having the rarest objects. It’s about arranging our reality so it becomes a door for an unseen world. A feather looks like a clue. A coin feels like a message. A simple image becomes a question you can’t stop asking.

That’s what I love about performing magic up close: it doesn’t shout. It leans in. It invites you to notice the tiny hinge where certainty swings open, allowing doubt to enter, imagination to flow, and our world to expand. And yes, plenty of secrets are on display. But not the cinematic kind, where someone teases, “I could tell you, but then…” No. The secrets I care about are gentler and far more personal: the secret of what you miss while you’re sure you’re watching, the secret of how quickly you trust your own eyes, the secret of how a story can change your perception of a moment.

I won’t spoil what happens in the performance. I’m allergic to spoilers. But I’ll tell you this: you won’t leave with answers. You’ll leave with better questions, the kind that matter the most. That’s the key to unlocking the curiosity we all have inside. Soon, we will be opening doors to the public for the first time. If you're thinking of visiting, consider this your welcome note. Please, come step into our cabinet. Bring your most curious self. I’ll take care of the rest.

If you want to step inside a live cabinet of curiosities, reserve a seat at the Time for Magic studio performance in Porto.